Footnotes in advance:
1. “Now exhibiting” means “now being exhibited.” It’s a progressive passive construction that now survives only in a few expressions such as “Now showing” (= “Now being shown”) and “What’s cooking?” (= “What’s being cooked?”).
2. The epigraph from Hamlet’s “Speak the speech, I pray you” had extra force in 1847, when its readers would have known that a daguerreotype’s surface is reflective, like a mirror.
3. “Fleeting and happy expressions” means “fleeting and lucky expressions.”
4. “Saloon” means “studio,” “likely” means “capable,” and “sold for no fault” means “money-back guarantee.”
On the other hand, “Seamstresses for sale” has kept on meaning “Seamstresses for sale,” not only as of 1847 but at present as well. The Civil War dismantled the text machines that had fabricated the phrase, and so “Seamstresses for sale” is no longer a tissue of truths. But its bared minimum, “We have for sale GIRLS,” remains on the loom. It still means what it says.
